Voicing complaints is fine, but what I seem to hear mostly is a lot of pissing and moaning about RACs falling.

Not being able to contribute at the level one is used to doing seems to be a misguided effort to begin with. One should never expect to contribute at 100%, 100% of the time when dealing with projects such as SETI and it's budget/server issues that we are all aware of.

It really should all be taken in stride, IMHO. If I go to my local homeless shelter and I can't put in 100% effort for some reason, it's fine by me. I could complain about wasting gas driving down there, but I do it by choice to begin with. I think less complaining and more understanding go a long way to being happier overall. Unless you like complaining and being upset....

Well, as I said, not upset, really.
Some of us are just passionate about what we do.
Call it manic/depressive. Call it OCD. Call it driven. Call it whatever you like. Call it me.

I am that way in most things I do. Just because the project does not promise 100% does not mean I will not try to give it my 100%.
And I realize that the project does not have the resources to do so.

I am not bashing Seti in the least. You must realize that, don't you?

That does not mean I won't put my 2 cents in on a regular basis, and point out what I see for others to comment on. Like yourself.

There are many times when we 'complainers' have pointed the way to solutions or problems that the staff had not thought of or realized were happening at the time.

Call it constructive criticism.

If I would win the lottery things could be different, of course.

Same here, But then I'd give Seti a large gift, But then when I have had the money in the past I would donate to salvation army and such, Today Its different. In any case I still can't upload and pretty soon all the PC will be doing is trying to upload as It's almost become a permanent backoff here.Pluto is still a planetBeep! Beep!

I have been more than patient, as this is my 7th post since 1999! How long do the contributors need to wait for SETI management (not Matt) to fix the issues?

I'm very happy to see new people with new perspectives on the boards. Welcome!

A lot of money has been spent to develop recievers based upon Allen's money.

Paul Allen's money goes to the SETI Institute, which has no affiliation with SETI@Home. None of that money goes here.

[Edit] I see this happen frequently, actually. Many users come here thinking that SETI@Home is given money by Paul Allen, and accordingly have higher expectations of SETI@Home. Very few realize that there are dozens of SETI projects, of which SETI@Home is only one of them.

The goal of SETI@Home is to do good science on a very limited budget. Sure, SETI@Home could bring in tons of cash from donations, buy uber-servers with 100% uptime and keep a constant flow of data going out to users. But that defeats the purpose of scientists proving that a dedicated scientist can still do their work without throwing money at the problem.

SETI@Home gratefully accept as much donated CPU power as they can, but with the the understanding that they cannot provide 100% uptime. This is why they've suggested that people get interested in multiple projects and donate to other needed science as well.

Could it be that processing data has taken a back seat to new antenna and reciever funding by a single contributor? Where is SETI headed? I believe that a "systems" approach is needed blending current data crunching with advances in reciever capability. If there is no way to analyze the data collected, should we spend money to collect more? Matt and staff should be applauded. They have done a great job, with limited funds and with out proper management direction or oversite. Fix the management and SETI will do beter science!

It's very hard to manage a science project that only has 4 part time people, little to no funding, and the staff-to-user ratio is just simply ridiculous.

I think once people realize the sheer vastness of SETI@Home's particular world, people should change their views and appreciate the work involved to keep our little project going.

"ÜberNerdNation" wrote:

A simple note on the site that says - "The site is down due to server issues, we will post a new message on this page once the servers are fully functional. Please remember this is primarily a volunteer project. Any donations to help replace damaged servers, cooling units, and upgrade technology would be appreciated." The only message on the site that I could find said the site would be back up Thursday morning. I think this is the problem, I learned from my own IT experience, never promise. Just say you are doing your best to get it up as soon as possible. If the team could find 5 mins to post something like this, I think people would relax.

Actually, they have done this before. People started complaining about the lack of progress and promises. People wanted to nail them harder for not committing to anything, and started personally attacking Matt because he takes weekends off for his band, saying that he wasn't "dedicated" enough.

The bottom line is that, unfortunately, you just won't make everyone happy. People are going to get frustrated, complain that no one cares, and leave. This couldn't be farther from the truth. The staff care very much, but simply don't have the ability to meet some people's expectations, and I think those people hold SETI@Home to the same expectation they would any other business. If they do, then they fail to realize the ultimate experiment that is distributed, volunteer computing.

All this is, of course, my own personal views. I'm not going to convince everyone, especially the extremely frustrated ones that will press on with their own points of view, but I can only hope that once their frustration dies down, that maybe I will have planted a seed of thought that will bring them back when they're ready.

It' your home... and everything else except for my laptop, which finally uploaded enough results to request new work units. Download seems to be no problem. My other two machines couldn't upload anything since don't know when.

It is a little frustrating to know work units are available to send out and are flowing, but the client will not request new work because of the number of work units queued to be uploaded & my clients sit idle.
It seems a SETI has created a very complicated mouse trap, on the server side as well as on the client side.
I hope to see some day a better client. I actually preferred the old SETI application and setiqueue.

A lot of money has been spent to develop recievers based upon Allen's money

"Allen's money" was donated to the SETI Institute, who is using it to develop their own new telescope. Jill Tarter also has a bunch of "TED" money which is supporting an independent, volunteer-based search for data in the signals.

SETI@Home is a completely separate organization. They do not benefit in any way from that largesse.

Well, after due consideration, and the seeming lack of interest from the seti staff to resolve or even engage with contributor's about what is (or not!) happening, I'm ceasing my contribution to this project.

I say again, in the words of Douglas Adams, don't panic.

DNA also wrote about planet where most of the people were unhappy for pretty much of the time.

He wrote that most of the suggested solutions were largely concerned with "the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green bits of paper that were unhappy."

The work isn't moving, but it isn't unhappy about it.

The "digital watch" that I'm looking at right now doesn't seem to mind not having much to do...

It is a little frustrating to know work units are available to send out and are flowing, but the client will not request new work because of the number of work units queued to be uploaded & my clients sit idle.
It seems a SETI has created a very complicated mouse trap, on the server side as well as on the client side.
I hope to see some day a better client. I actually preferred the old SETI application and setiqueue.

The limit is there to prevent infinite work from accumulating on the client. There have been projects where the upload time exceeded the crunch time.BOINC WIKI